Microsoft seeded most of the important stuff in advance, and at first glance these new materials don't contain many surprises. A majority of the official submission guidelines is devoted to making sure Marketplace apps aren't a pain in the ass: apps can't make random calls; data requests must be user-approved; uninstallation must be clean and complete; etc. The rules are practical, like the twelve we've already seen, and the document softly implies that Microsoft intends to be a little more lenient than Apple. We'll see!

As far a the developer agreement goes, the $99 annual fee and 70% dev commission still stand, while return and tax details have been laid out in full. Developers are paid when they hit $200 in commissions, which, like most of the others store policies, is somewhere around industry standard.

Sadly, the document doesn't say when the marketplace will open, which is the only part of this whole saga that anyone cares about anymore. Don't overestimate your hype, guys. [the unwired via Engadget]